Recognizing each student’s unique needs, Palo Alto Unified School District Board of Education candidate Josh Salcman emphasizes and advocates for personalized education to help students thrive.
“My overarching priority is figuring out how we can use the resources of the district in creative ways that are supported by evidence to personalize the education experiences of all of our students,” Salcman said. “That includes students that are struggling to reach grade-level standards and students who are multiple grades ahead in one or more subjects.”
According to Salcman, taking on the role of a full-time parent deepened his understanding of child development and led him to be actively involved in the school community.
“Seven years ago, when my son was diagnosed with hearing loss … it was an obvious choice for me to become the full-time parent,” Salcman said. “In the process, I got to learn a lot about social and emotional learning, speech acquisition, and language acquisition. I also had opportunities to get involved in schools. I was on the PTA [Parent Teacher Association], site council, and volunteered in the classroom and on the playground.”
Reflecting on his personal experience as a parent, Salcman said it is important to recognize and address all the diverse needs students have.
“When I think about how much variation there is in just the kids in my family, it makes me really appreciate just how different students can be in terms of their strengths, their interests, their challenges, and what they need in order to thrive in our schools,” Salcman said. “That just makes me feel really strongly that as a school district, … we need to make sure that we’re really looking at every student as individuals and not just arbitrarily putting people into buckets.”
In addition to his personal experiences, Salcman’s background as an entrepreneur in educational technology transferred over to his experience as a parent as well.
“When you’re creating a startup … you may have an initial idea of a problem you’re trying to solve, but as you create a product or service and test that out, you start to realize that you can’t stay too fixated on your vision; you have to make sure you’re solving the problems that people actually have and not the problems that you thought they had.”
Through his methodical approach, Salcman hopes to find ways to help each and every student in the classroom. One of his solutions to provide better individualized support to students was to have more classroom aids.
“One [strategy] is to invest more into the use of classroom aides, especially at the elementary level,” Salcman said. “In terms of how the classroom functions, having another set of eyes and ears makes a huge difference in terms of providing space for the teacher to work with students one on one if they need to.”
Beyond individualized support in the classroom, Salcman also advocates for exploring alternative educational pathways to help students manage stress and anxiety more effectively. Furthermore, Salcman says exploring different educational pathways will also fulfill diverse needs, which is a must.
“I want to make sure that we’re supporting our students and trying to get a handle on some of these issues like stress and anxiety,” Salcman said. “By providing alternative pathways for students for whom the typical high school track is not the right fit.”
Salcman said he also aims to support and include teachers in conversations about district decisions.
“Another really important one [priority] is making sure that we’re supporting our teachers,” Salcman said. “The data related to teacher sentiment is discouraging. The percent of teachers who feel like they are respected, included, and heard in decision-making processes are in the 40% range, and that’s really troubling.”
Salcman has received endorsements from organizations such as the Santa Clara County Democratic Party, the Palo Alto Educators Association and the Palo Alto Daily Post. Additionally, Salcman has the support of Palo Alto Mayor Greer Stone, previous Palo Alto Mayor Lydia Kou and current PAUSD board members Shana Segal, Shounak Dharap and Jennifer DiBrienza.
Salcman is one of five candidates running for three open seats on the school board. The other candidates are Rowena Chiu, Nicole Chiu-Wang, Chris Colohan and Allison Kamhi.
